Not much.

Various more or less unsatisfactory inquiries and analyses have been done. Nothing too bad or egregious to report, they say.

Move along, folks! Back to mass collectivist action to run down civilisation – according to Green Rules.

Clive Crook likes the idea of acting to mitigate the risk of climate change but is unimpressed:

But no, the reports make things worse. At best they are mealy-mouthed apologies; at worst they are patently incompetent and even wilfully wrong.

The climate-science establishment, of which these inquiries have chosen to make themselves a part, seems entirely incapable of understanding, let alone repairing, the harm it has done to its own cause…

It’s not the extreme or otherwise ill-advised policy recommendations of the greens that have turned opinion against action of any kind, though I grant you they’re no help. It’s the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place.

That is why Climategate mattered. And that is why these absurd "vindications" of the climate scientists involved also matter.

The economic burdens of mitigating climate change will not be shouldered until a sufficient number of voters believe the problem is real, serious, and pressing. Restoring confidence in climate science has to come first.

That, in turn, means trusting voters with all of the doubts and unanswered questions — with inconvenient data as well as data that confirm the story — instead of misleading them (unintentionally, of course) into believing that everything is cut and dried.

The inquiries could have started that process. They have further delayed it.

Scroll down through the comments of the usual incompatible for and against sort, until you get to steveinch, who reads my very mind:

The issue isn’t whether climate is changing. The issue is whether there is a credible plan with an IRR above the cost of capital to do something about it.

For the moment, the answer to that question, particularly as it applies to unilateral action by the US, appears to be no. With regard to coordinated global action, the answer may be yes, depending on how you think of the notion of intergenerational discount rates. If you are willing to argue that there should be no discount rate for intergenerational issues, you can conclude that a coordinated global approach would work. Of course, if you take that point of view, no sovereign nation should borrow to finance its operations unless it will pay the debt off within a generation.

But even with that charitable view of discounting, the case for unilateral action is weak because unilateral action will not solve the problem. Thus the costs of action exist and so do the costs of climate change.

The case for unilateral action economically must be made based on an expected value calculation, and, even with a zero discount rate, the numbers simply do not add up.

Precisely.

Is it wiser (a) to heave away at impossible global expense now ("just in case") to try to stop the climate changing? Or (b) instead spend money as and when the climate does ‘change’ to alleviate the effects (some of which will be positive anyway).

No-one knows. The Stern Review seemingly failed on this most central point.

The only fact that counts is that Western governments are not going to pass any measures which make a massive one-off difference. Money and voter support are not there.

So let’s get on with adapting and accumulating lots of small advances in energy-saving and more modest use of resources.

Bring on Interflush.

And this Israeli invention for solar power.